Beardyman captures the quiet sounds of the 21st century

The beatboxing British artist paints an aural comparison to past generations.

We live in a silent century. Though no less powerful than their pre-millennial ancestors, our post-millennial innovations are mostly intangible; even when they do occupy physical space, they but wobble neighboring air particles and scarcely make a sound.

Compiling the "Sounds of the 21st Century" is a steep challenge, therefore, but one that legendary beatboxer Beardyman didn't shy from.

"There's an absence of sound rather than a defining sound," he tells Wired.co.uk. Pay attention to the objects around you—the ones that are truly 21st century make next to no noise when we interact with them. The clatter of keyboards? 20th century. The din of car engines? 20th century. The cacophony of the city? Choose whichever century BC you like.

To create a track that begins to "encapsulate the mood of living in the future," as Beardyman puts it, you have to amplify the silent touches we make to interact with modern society. First and foremost, the tapping of fingers on smartphones. "That's all everyone does these days. That's [partly] the point of the video," he says.

In the song, Beardyman meshes beatboxing, phone-tapping, key-bashing, and other sounds in a glitchy track, which will be performed live on September 2 at the O2 Campus Party Europe opening party.

Beardyman presents "the sounds of the 21st century"

Beardyman is frank about the challenge of capturing our auditory experience of a digital world when most of its sounds are either skeuomorphs (the clack of a digital camera, for example) or hidden from us entirely.

"I could have done the beeping of a server room, but you wouldn't recognize that sound anyway," he argues. You might understand the reference, but there's a only small minority of us who experience the lonely beeping of a server stack in real life.

The 21st century is Cageian, he says, referencing John Cage's famous four minutes of silence piece 4'33". He points to the human genome project and Kickstarter as true achievements of the 21st century and asks, "what noise do they make?"

The music video was made with David Hopkinson (aka Mr_Hopkinson) and includes flashbacks to a 1950s imagination of what "futuristic" meant. The one thing people never imagined, he said, was the Internet and the Web. Hoverboards, jetpacks, living on the Moon—we haven't figured those things out. "But we have figured out a way of broadcasting people's thoughts anywhere for anyone to hear," he says.

Even the tangible advances that are starting to define the century (Tesla's electric cars, for example) signify a move away from noise and toward silence.

"I was in Herbie Hancock's Tesla S the other day," he says, noting how quiet it was. "Now I can die in peace," he adds, laughing.

"We have the potential to live in a much quieter world," says Beardyman, arguing that if and when we get rid of the noisy technology of the past, we'll live in "crazy silent cities."

I personally wouldn't mind living in a silent city. If the only sounds were people walking and talking, along with wind and other natural noises, it would be quite peaceful. I routinely go on hikes and take my dog to the pond to get away from the artificial and loud noises of technology. It would be great if I didn't have to leave where I live to do so.

Today I drove from the Lake District, in northern England, to London. As you might imagine, the Lake District sounds were gentle and bucolic - the moo-ing of cows, the rustle of trees, the babbling brooks, the hush of the heather. I nearly felt culture shock coming home. The hum of the air conditioning units, the cars, the Heathrow flight path, the jabber of excited families of fifteen different cultures, the raucousness of no more than five Aussies tumbling down the street. I love both symphonies. And I love Beardyman's arrangement - it makes me want to listen more

Because a highly amplified sound of a finger tapping a cell phone directly into a microphone sounds *exactly* like what I hear when I'm tapping on it to make a phone call or play a game. Sure. Sounds exactly the same. So this is a *great* interpretation of everyday sounds.

This video was terrible. The concept is interesting, but completely and entirely unoriginal. The execution was a complete fail, the song (? can it be called a song? the audio, then) was completely unlistenable.

Peace and quiet can only be achieved by having enough space between you and your neighbors ... or living in a library. There will be no "crazy silent cities", not as long as cars have horns that seem to automatically honk if stationary for more than a minute. Not as long as there are neighbors who like to crank up and point their loudspeakers out the window so everyone can hear clearly for a 2 block radius, or neighbors who get into fights in their driveway until someone calls the cops, or people who live above you who apparently give their kids bowling balls to drop and roll around on the floor above you. These are all reasons why I moved back into the country for some real peace and quiet.

"We have the potential to live in a much quieter world," says Beardyman, arguing that if and when we get rid of the noisy technology of the past, we'll live in "crazy silent cities".

But not TOO quiet. I want to be able to hear the grass grow.

You'll still be able to hear the hum of a noisy power supply, or a stealthily whoosh of a silent car as it sneaks up behind you. Which by the way, I think most automobile designers are aware that having a car that is too quiet is a dangerous thing ... people who are meant for the city are used to the background noise.

Moving anything produces noise. Yes, the Tesla is quiet on the inside, but you still hear the motors and wheels whining away from the outside. If you listen carefully, most of the noise from modern cars (excluding muscle and sport cars) is wind noise not engine noise. Standing on the side of the road you hear more wooshing than engine revving. Air planes are another example of lots of noise that most people don't notice. I hear every single plane that flies overhead (living near O'hare doesn't help). The worst source of noise is the venerable air conditioner. I'm in the minority, but I am keenly aware of every air vent and fan in every building I go into.

The idea of this being a "silent" century is laughable. Yes, most inventions of the 21st century are quiet, but inventions from past centuries aren't going away any time soon.

If he is going to "captures the quiet sounds of the 21st century" and "paints an aural comparison to past generations", he might want to start somewhere else with his sampling. Those sounds that we don't usually hear around us for instance that Cosmo works with:

after the soothing lenthean vocals cut out, it drums into a harder beat, and it's like the hood popped off the seamless modern machine, revealing the bustle of wires beneath. sort of the sense i get from the internet: swept around the globe as if in a dream... so much going on, but i feel calm, in a bubble.

after the soothing lenthean vocals cut out, it drums into a harder beat, and it's like the hood popped off the seamless modern machine, revealing the bustle of wires beneath. sort of the sense i get from the internet: swept around the globe as if in a dream... so much going on, but i feel calm, in a bubble.

Halcyon and on and on is a classic, but its not really relevant to the discussion